Daily incredulities

I just found out that Seinfeld is 54, six years from yelling at kids to get off his lawn.

"In an August 2008 issue of the Japanese newsweekly Shukan Gendai, Waseda University professor Toshimitsu Shigemura, an authority on the Korean Peninsula,[44] claimed that Kim Jong-il died in late 2003 and had been replaced in public appearances by one or more stand-ins previously employed to protect him from assassination attempts.[45] In a subsequent best-selling book, The True Character of Kim Jong-il, Shigemura cited apparently un-named people close to Kim's family along with Japanese and South Korean intelligence sources, claiming they confirmed Kim's diabetes took a turn for the worse early in 2000 and from then until his supposed death three and a half years later he was confined to a wheelchair. Shigemura moreover claimed a voiceprint analysis of Kim speaking in 2004 did not match a known earlier recording. It was also noted that Kim Jong-il did not appear in public for the Olympic torch ceremony in Pyongyang on 28 April 2008. The question had reportedly "baffled foreign intelligence agencies for years."[46]

On 9 September 2008, various sources reported that after he did not show up that day for a military parade celebrating North Korea's 60th anniversary, US intelligence agencies believed Kim might be "gravely ill" after having suffered a stroke. He had last been seen in public a month earlier.[47][48] A former CIA official said earlier reports of a health crisis were likely to be accurate."

...

That's like something out of a movie.

Donna Summer must be getting on a bit!!
how old is she?

"did you vote today?"

Yup, Labor. Kadima got the most votes by a narrow margin, which is nice, but there's a strong possibility that they won't be able to form a coalition. Oh well.

(Kadima is the centerist party currently in power, by the way)

*centrist

"...Also, he was the first Persian mathematician to call the unknown factor of an equation (i.e., the x) shiy (meaning thing or something in Arabic). This word was transliterated to Spanish during the Middle Ages as xay, and, from there, it became popular among European mathematicians to call the unknown factor either xay, or more usually by its abbreviated form, x, which is the reason that unknown factors are usually represented by an x."

I always thought mathematicians just pulled "x" out of their collective asses.